I am Da Song

Chapter 350 Rifling and muskets

The cannon known as the God of War is actually very simple in principle.

It is the gunpowder that explodes in the sealed barrel, and then the air pressure will fly the solid shell through the barrel.

This is something that works wonders.

Therefore, the principle of preventing the explosion of the chamber is also very simple. The most brutal thing is to thicken the barrel so that the gunpowder cannot explode the steel.The most delicate is the standardized filling.The most high-end is to improve the barrel material.

In the mid-Ming Dynasty, artillery was easy to explode. One is that the cast iron process is not good, and the other is that the amount of gunpowder loaded by soldiers depends on personal feeling.In the later stage, the problem of bombing the bomb was solved based on scientific experience.

Although Da Song didn't have as much scientific experience as Da Ming, he managed to achieve the same effect by spending money.

The gun barrel is made of the most precious brass, and even the powder pack is wrapped in silk.

The reason why silk is chosen is because the raw silk is exquisite and high-end, and there is almost no residue after touching it.

This point cannot be achieved even during the period when the sun never sets and the empire is completely victorious. It is only after the second industrial revolution that the British army has the strength to wrap gunpowder with raw silk.

The power of the Great Song artillery can be said to be all spent on money.

In the era of hot weapons, if you have money, you can create absolute combat power. This is by no means something that cold forging armor and Japanese swords can catch up with by hand.

But today's artillery is still a smoothbore gun, and the power is not much different from the rifled gun. The main gap lies in the stability of the rifling.

Zhao Huan directly opened the history plug-in, and instructed Shen Dan: "The next improvement of the artillery is mainly divided into two aspects. The first is to describe the rifling inside the barrel. The second is to design a shell, which is wrapped with a layer of steel and filled with gunpowder."

These two things can basically be understood by men of later generations who pay a little attention to the military.

Among them, the rifling sounds high-end, but it is actually not difficult to solve. After all, the gun barrel is made of copper. As long as a steel breech is designed and a little lever and gear are used, the rifling can be engraved on the gun bore.

It is absolutely difficult for the skilled artisans of the Central Plains to engrave some kind of lines and patterns on the metal surface.

What is difficult is what most people think of as simple shells, that is, blooming shells.

Thanks to those unscrupulous TV drama directors in later generations, many people mistakenly think that the shells of the first generation of artillery will explode after being thrown...

In fact, for a very long time, the shells thrown by the artillery were solid iron lumps.When the battle was urgent, the shells ran out, and soldiers would even put lead and stones into the barrel.

So until Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the shells would not explode.

To study time-delay fuzes, technocrats and craftsmen must not only have very superb forging techniques, but also have a very strong mathematical foundation.

After Zhao Huan gave instructions on the scientific research direction, Shen Danlue thought of several ways to carve the rifling, and said: "As for the rifling, I thought that the gun barrel could be removed and fixed in one place, and then a long rod of iron could be used to carve the rifling." rod, one end holds the engraving hammer, and the other end is mechanically rotated to leave rifling on the barrel wall."

Zhao Huan nodded and said, "I don't care how to carve. Even an eighth-level fitter can carve the rifling in by rubbing the rifling with his hands. You need to experiment more. What kind of rifling pattern is the most stable for the shell."

"Don't begrudge money, set up a few more groups, experiment at the same time, and make the rifled gun as soon as possible. I hope that before the end of the year, a batch of artillery will be delivered to the Shenwu Youjun."

As the most loyal and traditional army in the Song Dynasty, the Shenwu Youjun was naturally the first army to change into hot weapons without a doubt.

Zhao Huan turned to Yue Fei and said: "The country needs a lot of copper to cast copper cannons. However, Gaochang imitated imperial banknotes and searched for copper coins, causing endless harm. So you know why this country must be destroyed."

Yue Fei nodded solemnly, and said: "With this artifact, I will destroy Gaochang in the Western Regions, destroy my country, destroy my species, and exterminate my descendants!"

It is imperative to rebuild the hegemony system for the Song's foreign conquest.

Not only to maintain the coinage rights of the Song Dynasty, but also to obtain the origin of raw materials.

The Central Plains has been short of copper since ancient times, but in the Western Regions, in South Asia, especially in India, copper is not a particularly scarce metal.

The current situation of the Song Dynasty is that the more it expands outward, the more conducive it is to consolidate its military hegemony.

Zhao Huan smiled and said to Yue Fei: "Of course you won't let Qing go out with only artillery. I have prepared another sharp weapon for Qing."

Shen Dan waved his hand, and the craftsmen immediately came up with a musket in hand.

The invention of the first musket in history was in 1128, and it is now in 1133.

Under Zhao Huan's intervention, the advent of muskets was a full five years late.

But the level of technology has been improved by a whole generation!
From a stun gun to a matchlock gun.

The most important change is that the material is quite different. The firearm that Zhao Huan is holding now is not made of bamboo, but solid wood, and the barrel is mainly made of steel.

But this gun barrel is not made of mud, but hammered out by craftsmen.

Shen Dan introduced to Zhao Huan: "In order to make this gun barrel, the craftsman used an iron pole as thick as a wooden chopstick as a cold bone, then wrapped it with a red-hot iron ingot, and hammered it out."

This is pure manual work, without any technical content.From the first generation of barrels to World War II, the craftsmanship has always been like this.

"It is relatively simple to put the gun barrel together by hammering, but the key is to make the inside of the barrel smooth and white without iron filings. For this reason, the craftsman also set up a quadrangular pyramid about the thickness of the chopsticks (chopsticks), and turn it through to make the aurora clean, and then the hair will be released." Medicines do not block."

Zhao Huan's later generations did not major in mechanics, so he really didn't know that grinding and polishing can be done by rotating a square pyramid at high speed.

Probably to ensure that the barrel does not explode, the musket in Zhao Huan's hand is very primitive, as it is thick and long.

The barrel of the gun is about three fingers thick, and the caliber is estimated to be [-]mm. It can almost be called a firecracker.

The gun is five feet long, and the barrel occupies more than four feet.What is the concept, an official of the imperial city is only a little over five feet, and this musket is almost as tall as a soldier.

As for ignition, it is very simple.Its principle is exactly the same as that of a cannon, pull the trigger, let the matchlock tied in front of the trigger fall, directly contact the gunpowder, ignite and launch.

The bird gun gets its name because its ignition structure looks like a bird's beak pecking water when it is ignited.

A row of craftsmen brought over twenty muskets, and each of them had a one-meter-long matchlock wrapped around their right arm, and the front end of the matchlock was tied to the clip that linked the trigger.

Seeing this scene, Zhao Huan immediately smiled, this really fully interpreted the characteristics of the matchlock gun.

It has to be said that under the imperial power system, everyone racked their brains to understand the holy will.

Zhao Huan said a matchlock gun, and the whole gunpowder workshop tried its best to get closer to this.The way to ignite the fire must be to use slow-burning hemp rope.

"Try the gun, let me see how charming this matchlock gun is."

(End of this chapter)